Bulk-viscosity-driven freeze-out in heavy ion collision

We give a review on the HBT puzzle, and argue that its resolution requires the introduction of new physics close to the phase transition scale. We argue that a candidate for this new physics is bulk viscosity, recently postulated to peak, and even diverge, close to the phase transition temperature. We show that such a viscosity peak can force the system created in heavy ion collisions to become unstable, and filament into fragments whose size is weakly dependent on the global size of the system, thereby triggering freeze-out.     

Lecture notes on shear viscosity in heavy ion collisions

These notes are a summary of a lecture delivered at the 30th Erice School in Nuclear Physics and provide an elementary introduction to shear viscosity as it is applied to heavy ion collisions. After a qualitative review of the ideal and viscous space-time evolutions, I calculate the elliptic flow and discuss how viscosity affects the results.     

Bulk viscosity of strange quark matter in density dependent quark mass model

We have studied the bulk viscosity of strange quark matter in the density dependent quark mass model (DDQM) and compared results with calculations done earlier in the MIT bag model where u, d masses were neglected and first order interactions were taken into account. We find that at low temperatures and high relative perturbations, the bulk viscosity is higher by 2 to 3 orders of magnitude while at low perturbations the enhancement is by 1–2 order of magnitude as compared to earlier results. Also the damping time is 2–3 orders of magnitude lower implying that the star reaches stability much earlier than in MIT bag model calculations.     

Bulk viscosity of hot dense Quark matter in the PNJL model

Starting from the Kubo formula and the QCD low energy theorem, we study the the bulk viscosity of hot dense quark matter in the PNJL model from the equation of state. We show that the bulk viscosity has a sharp peak near the chiral phase transition, and that the ratio of bulk viscosity over entropy rises dramatically in the vicinity of the phase transition. These results agree with those from the lattice and other model calculations. In addition, we show that the increase of chemical potential raises the bulk viscosity.     

Exploring the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter; news from SPS and RHIC

Two experimental programs are aiming to study nuclear collisions in the energy regime in order to explore an essential part of the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter. The programs are motivated by observations that indicate a phase transition to take place in this energy domain: the onset of deconfinement. The STAR collaboration proposes an energy scan in the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at BNL. The ongoing program of the NA61/SHINE experiment consists of a two-dimensional energy-system size scan in nuclear and elementary collisions. The goal of both programs is to study the properties of the onset of deconfinement and to eventually discover the conjectured critical point of strongly interacting matter. A comparison of the strengths and limitations reveals the complementarity of the two programs.